Virginia Voter Registration Way Up

Just breaking, the Virginia Board of Elections has released new information about the number of new voters who are eligible to participate in this year’s presidential election. The state’s pool of voters has jumped 10% just from January first. I blogged about this very topic just a few weeks ago.

Here is the story from the Associated Press:

With BC-VA–Registrations-Top 25
By BOB LEWIS
AP Political Writer
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – More than 436,000 Virginians registered to vote since the start of this year, pushing the state’s voter rolls past 5 million for the first time. The State Board of Elections says it’s by far the largest jump in voter registration.

The 436,155 net gain in registrations since Jan. 1 increased the state’s pool of registered voters by nearly 10 percent, to 5,021,993.

The unprecedented wave of registrations is driven by involvement of young voters in the historic and emotional presidential election in Virginia, a reliably Republican state that is for grabs this year for the first time in decades.

Forty percent of the voters registered this year were younger than 25. According to SBE data, 20 percent ranged from 25 to 35.